Many consultants who go through a persona shift, change of new department or project, or career change struggle with it. There’s all this experience you’ve gathered in previous chapters through challenges that might seem out of context in your new direction.

As a consultant, you have already excelled at some pretty important competencies such as understanding the needs and wants of your clients, delivering a valuable work product and service, and consistently exceeding your client’s expectations.

Good news is that these are qualities are transferable wherever you go, which means you don’t have to prove your value in a new industry. The real question is; How do I translate my value from previous experience into a new industry?

Try these exercises;

What Story Have You Been Telling?

As we move through our careers, we organically develop language to describe what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. It tends to show up when we meet new people, update our families, or when we move within our industry.

You need to identify what story you’ve been telling yourself and others during your consultant years. Think of it as a journal exercise.

Start at the beginning of your consultant career and write out the story of this chapter. When you’re done, read it back to yourself and—if you’ve been honest and taken your time—you’ll notice patterns and themes emerge.

When you pick it apart, you’ll identify the best parts—the parts you’re most proud of, the parts that accurately honor your skill, experience, and competency, are the ones that reveal your value.

What Story Do You Want to Tell?

As we transition away from what we’ve been doing and toward the new, we have to figure out how to tell our story in a way that resonates and is attractive to that new client. Once you’ve determined what industry you’d like to transition toward, you have to take the unique value you identified in the previous exercise and write a new story.

Identify 2 or 3 companies you would want to work for our “dream job” in this new industry. Study the company and culture language they use to describe their goals, wants, needs, and even challenges. The, take the story you drafted in the previously and re-write it using the industry language you’ve identified.

It’s not that easy and yes it is a challenge. But change doesn’t come from staying in your comfort zone. Try different exercises like this. It’ll take some time to become great at communicating your unique value in the new industry, but these exercises will help you recognize the value you essentially carry with you wherever you go and help you better at telling a new, unique to you story.

As long as you stay consistent, take risks and continue to embrace new challenges, your value will always evolve with you.

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Splice connects companies and agencies to independent consultants through our platform. We believe that it’s time to significantly change the way independent consultants are selected, trained, incentivized, developed, and deployed to projects to ensure that companies get better, faster, and more sustainable results.